I have been using Paypal for 7 years+ now and I have never had any problems with them. They just need your account info to verify that it is you and your account. It is really convenient because a lot of online places use paypal. You can get a paypal debit card that connects to your account to use like a regular debit card.

I haven't had any problems with PAYPAL. Nor has there been any problems with giving them my bank acct number in order to become verified.

When you go through the process of verifing your account, PAYPAL will send you 2 very small payments (couple of cents), and you will be asked to tell PAYPAL what those amounts are. That's how they confirm that you have access to the account and the account can receive funds. You don't have to send the money back, so you get a couple of cents for your trouble.

It is important to have a verified account -- not just to be able to buy things via PAYPAL -- but also to get the money in your account out (ie sent to your bank account) It's also important because many PTC/GPT sites require that you have a verified PAYPAL account before you can use PAYPAL to receive cashout amounts.